New Face Tilts Debate On Extension Of I-355

Activist Says Project Has Grass-roots Support

For most of the roughly 60 seconds Shawn Harper spent recently in front of the WTTW-TV cameras, he recalls his heart pounding so loudly that it was difficult to hear himself speak.

But the derisive murmur his zealous, pro-tollway remarks triggered indicated that anti-tollway forces in the "Chicago Tonight" audience heard him loud and clear.

The scene was the Rosemont Convention Center, where the public television news analysis program hosted by John Callaway had traveled for one of its occasional audience-participation shows.

The general topic was the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. Harper had joined the show specifically to champion the proposed tollway extension from Bolingbrook to New Lenox, a project currently stalled.

But as at a tollway-related meeting that he attended recently in New Lenox, Harper seemed to be outnumbered.

But appearances can be deceiving, says the 35-year-old activist from unincorporated Joliet Township, whose calling card reads, "Shawn Harper-- Practicing Responsible Citizenship with Loyalty to God, Family & Country." He says that the tollway opposition is erroneously portrayed as a groundswell and that it really is a small, vocal minority of people "fueling their own frenzy" in Will County.

Those opposed to the proposed 12.5-mile, $700 million extension of Interstate Highway 355 see it differently. Those same groups say that even if Harper is not a shill for high-profile pro-tollway groups and individuals, his public appearances are a remarkable coincidence.

A few weeks before Harper emerged as founder and chairman of 355-TEN, an acronym for Tollway Extension Now, area mayors met with Will County economic-development boosters about the need to put a grass-roots face on pro-extension sentiment, which they argue is more representative of the viewpoint of area residents.

If nothing else, they reasoned, a public initiative had to be mounted to neutralize the highly publicized view proffered by such citizens groups as SCAT (South Corridor Against the Tollway), a Homer Township-based group, and Lincolnway SCAT, a spinoff from the New Lenox area.

Mike Truppa is a spokesman for the Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest, which helped initiate the lawsuit that sidetracked the proposed extension.

After moving along with relative ease through various governmental reviews, the project--seen by some as a long-awaited economic engine for central Will--was halted in January. That's when a federal judge found that state highway planners hadn't analyzed the impacts on the area if the extension is not built. The tollway authority is appealing that decision.

Truppa says the timing of the two occurrences--the desire to put a grass-roots face on a pro-tollway movement and Harper's appearances--is curious.

"That's not to say that there aren't supporters (like Harper) among the general public for this project. We recognize that," says Truppa. "It's curious that we didn't see these sorts of visible efforts to mobilize public opinion in the prior decade."

Harper says he has been an activist for years in "pro-life movements and pro-gun movements and pro-candidate movements." He says the need for the road and support for it is apparent daily.

"All you have to do is travel in northern Will County or the Joliet area and you see that we need it," he argues. "These (SCAT) people are in the minority, but they don't know it.

"I was blind to the issue until about a year ago, when SCAT was getting so much publicity. I went and investigated it, and their position against the tollway, the way I saw it, was purely emotional and personal. I realized those people were fueling their own frenzy."

Harper says he learned for the first time at the WTTW program that the Will County Chamber of Commerce "was hoping for a citizens' action committee to come forward."

Harper's remarks on the tollway project echo what mayors of Lockport, Lemont, Bolingbrook and New Lenox, among others, have been saying about the relative merits of an I-355 extension. Transportation officials contend that proposed roadway has figured in the region's planning maps for 30 years.

But Harper represents a shift in the direction of a debate that heretofore had pitted government and corporate officials against citizens' groups.

Harper says it doesn't compromise his group's grass-roots nature that he is actively seeking support from business and labor groups and that 355-TEN is open to support from the same governmental and quasi-official forces that have consistently boosted the extension.

Harper is neither bothered that the operating engineers union, of which he is a member, is headed by a member of the tollway board nor that the materials company where he works could profit from any tollway construction.

"As an operating engineer . . . I've seen lost jobs and projected growth that's been canceled because of tollway opposition. I see firsthand that the construction industry and the economy are definitely not booming, and we need to do something."

The Joliet City Council got the ball rolling recently with adoption of a resolution that directs the city administration "to actively promote the construction of the southern extension . . . and to join other groups supporting its construction," such as 355-TEN and the Will County Chamber of Commerce and Center for Economic Development.